Miraculum
by Soul Jelly
Summary: With nothing but a memory to go by, Aelita and Jérémie take one final journey in search of answers to a decades-long puzzle. Random JxA ficlet.


**Miraculum  
**

**/**

Aelita's breaths left her in faint, smoky clouds, and a sharp twinge of thirst and exertion prickled her throat. Behind them, two sets of footsteps formed almost-perfect lines in the snow, telling the tale of how far they had walked. The shadowy pines of the forest ahead gave only ominous hints at where they were going.

As they reached the forest's edge, the tracks turned the crisp snow into muddy slush. They paused here, feeling the weight of their journey ready to crash down on them.

Aelita knew that, should she look down and to her right, she would see her own fingers linked through Jérémie's but through layers of cold and thick gloves, she could barely feel them. She couldn't help smiling as she looked at him, just barely human-shaped beneath the bulk of his quilted snowsuit. She knew she appeared a similar plodding, shapeless mass; the only differences were the colours they wore and the wispy lock of blond hair poking out from beneath his hat. Jérémie squinted, eyeing this unwelcome strand with irritation, but his gloves did not afford him the dexterity required to tuck it back into place.

She spoke the first words between them in a good few hours.

"Thanks for coming with me."

He turned away from her a little, kicking up snow with his shifting feet, and the expression on his face suggested guilt for all the complaining he had done, knowing what this meant to her. She didn't blame him, although they had traveled the world on strange whims before - they could afford to satisfy Aelita's desire for tiramisu one random Saturday mid-morning, and any number random wishes of Jérémie's.

This was different though, so much more important. Now they traveled chasing vague promises tied to a fragment of memory, a cabin in the middle of woods where Aelita knew her four-year-old self had been once, decades ago. She admitted the memories were faint - woods, snow, a log cabin, a stone well seen as though from a window, and little more. At the time, it had been so precious, so vivid yet so fleeting, that she had made Odd draw out the image as she described it, capturing the memory at her careful instruction.

Life carried them all along on a swift current, forcing Aelita to push that image of a log cabin in the Canadian Alps (don't ask me how, she'd said, I just_ know_) to the back of her mind.

Years later, it was the only loose thread left.

The only one, that is, with a chance of being followed up, and the very idea of answers at the end of it was too irresistible to ignore. And here they were.

So when she thanked him, it was sincere. He knew that, of course.

Jérémie had spoken, Aelita realised, the echo of his voice pulling her back to the present. She blinked, turned fully to face him.

"Sorry. I was miles away."

He returned her smile then, tugged her a little closer to him so that their arms were touching. "It's okay." He let out a single shiver against the cold, eyes flickering to the woods as he did so.

"Are you afraid?" Aelita asked him.

"No!" he protested. "Just cold."

She nodded slowly, an admission escaping her mouth without her noticing. "I am."

Jérémie studied her carefully then, saw the trepidation etched onto her face. He knew she was thinking, not just of the uncertainty right ahead of them, but of the plane tickets and the deadline they imposed, of work in Paris first thing Monday morning. If they didn't find it today, they never would.

He tugged lightly on her hand.

They walked on.

The trees grew thicker overhead, the lack of sound pressing in around them. The hotel wasn't far away, there were hikers on interconnecting trails nearby, but the woods closed off the sounds and made them feel like the only two people in the world. The forest reminded Jérémie of his childhood, the greenery that bordered his old school. He had gone back there though, a handful of years ago, and found everything much smaller than he remembered it.

Gradually they began to see the sky again, broadening patches of grey between the treetops. Despite all their layers they had begun to seize up with the cold, muscles straining against fatigue, minds forcing them onwards. Each step grew more difficult, their breathing laboured. Any conversation that had filled the silence now shriveled to nothing, with no room or breath to spare for it.

They rounded a curve in the path; suddenly, the now-dying sun caught the reflection of something, and they realised it was the shattered glass window of a small log cabin. Aelita gasped, a short, sharp sound. Jérémie half-expected her to shake off her exhaustion and break into a run, but if anything she began to walk more slowly than before.

He glanced at her questioningly.

"If this isn't the one..." she said.

"I know. We can't keep trying any more." It was tearing her apart, the constant ebb and tide of hope, and it killed him to see it. It would hurt her to take her back home, but it would hurt her even more if she were to continue. His voice was very quiet as he added, "I hope it's the one, Aelita."

"Me too."

They reached the front door, where Aelita drank in every detail as she tried to match them against her memories. They had found dozens of cabins, stayed in dozens of hotels, guided by Aelita's gut and suggestions offered by tourists. Many had called them crazy, trying to track down this proverbial needle in a haystack, given them sympathetic looks then raised sceptical eyebrows once the couple's back was turned.

Aelita had shrugged off the doubt, gritted her teeth, carried on, with Jérémie trailing behind her. There had come a point when words of reassurance lost their meaning, so he held her hand or else rested it lightly on her back, quietly ensuring that she got enough food and sleep, didn't stay awake staring out of hotel windows with Odd's old tattered drawing clenched in her fist.

Now, Aelita pushed lightly against the door. The hinges were rusted, so she pushed again, harder, Jérémie lending his strength until it finally caved in with a long, mournful creak. They stepped back as it did so, staring into the shadowy depths.

One way or another, the journey was almost over.

Aelita hunched her shoulders - "Let's go in" - and marched into the cabin.

Now that he didn't have the rhythm of walking to focus on, Jérémie was struggling to stay awake. He leaned against the wall, fighting to stop his teeth from chattering, and forced his drooping eyelids open so he could survey the room. It seemed bigger than it ought to be, half its furniture gone - only rotting bookshelves and the odd chair, with papers and debris and more questionable things littering the floor. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust.

"I'm going to take a look around, see if anything triggers my memories."

Aelita had crouched down to examine something, and now heaved herself to her feet wincing at the pain in her calves and bracing her hand against the wall for balance. Jérémie rubbed the back of his eyes with one hand, looking as exhausted as she felt.

"If I can help in any way, just let me know."

She kissed him on the cheek, quick and spontaneous and full of sudden adoration. "Thanks."

She wandered slowly, senses straining for smells and sounds, trying to empty her head and entice memories to drift in. Aelita ran her hands lightly over the windowsills, peered through the windows at a garden covered with snow. Amidst thick blankets of it stood an ancient outhouse, its roof damp and rotting.

"Jérémie... I think..."

"Aelita?"

Her heart was racing, and she grappled with a mounting sense of excitement, hope that danced in her eyes like fireflies. A grin threatened to burst into her flushed face, one born of nervous anticipation as much as anything else. Jérémie's expression was unreadable, but for a small, resigned smile. He had seen her heart broken too many times over the course of this trip, and he steeled himself for another crushing wave of disappointment - the melancholy silence it would bring with it as the light faded from her eyes; the way she would hold in the tears until the damn burst, until she cried and cried until he thought she'd never stop.

"I'm not sure, yet," she admitted, "but look." He came to stand by her shoulder at the small, broken window, taking in what she was pointing at. "Let's go and have a look," Aelita added, walking ahead of him out into what was once a garden but was now so overgrown that, like the cabin, it was wild and feral and very much a part of the forest. It was when she stepped outside, when an imperceptible spark ignited against something hidden deep in her mind, and everything changed.

"Oh!" A pause, as she focused on something internal. I remember this," she said. "This place..." She was whispering, as though anything louder would break the moment in two, scare away the memories bubbling beneath the surface of her subconscious. "This view from the back of the house, I remember it too. There used to be a road near here, but it's all overgrown now." She talked faster and faster, the memories spilling out of her almost as fast as she could put them into words. "My parents and I built snowmen, and I lost one of my favourite scarves and cried until Papa shoveled away half the snow to find it."

When Jérémie caught a glimpse of her face, he saw it stained with tears. They followed the curves her smile made of her cheeks, dripping from the end of her nose and dripping onto her jacket. The happiness radiated from her like sunbeams.

He was so happy he could have kissed her, but was content for then to enjoy the moment on the periphery. She stood there, eyes closed, hands limp at her sides, simply remembering for a few minutes. And then she turned to the rotting wood hut beside them, as though following some invisible clue, and peered inside. There was only room for one of them to stand inside the tiny hut, so Jérémie stood aside to let Aelita in. She rummaged in the dark, and when she emerged, bent double with the strain of dragging a dark-tinted plastic container out into the snow, neither was sure what to think.

Aelita straightened up, turning to Jérémie but one eye always on the box, as though it might disappear.

"Did you expect to find that there?" he asked.

"I don't know. I only felt like it was worth a look."

"Is it familiar?"

"Yes." She thought about it. "We stored my toys in it. Yes, I remember now. I wonder... if there's anything else?"

The box was worn, chewed by mice in places, but other than that it had weathered the years well. Neither Jérémie nor Aelita dared breath as she bent and prised the lid off. Anything else was probably too much to hope for, and Aelita would have been content with the restored memories, but a fresh wave of tears overtook her as she lifted out the contents, each one a priceless treasure. The diaries - more memories, not her own this time but even more precious, transcriptions of a life in cursive, feminine script - and the music box, and the leather-bound album of photographs.

They stood there, almost in the middle of nowhere, Jérémie with his hand on Aelita's shoulder and her smiling through her tears. It was snowy, cold and growing dark, and all the good in the world had conspired to shine on Aelita in this one moment, the final piece in a decades-long puzzle.

It was absurd. It was a stroke of luck like nothing Jérémie had ever seen.

It was, he decided, a miracle.


End file.
